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Signs of times: Where is it all going?

Signs of times: Where is it all going?

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President Barack Obama’s public approval rating is at an all-time low, and the Congress’ rating is even lower.

In 1950, 28 percent of all Americans were on government assistance; today 53 percent of Americans receive government assistance. In 1986, the Federal Register had 44,812 pages of regulations; today it has 78,961 pages.

Since the end of the “Great Recession” in 2009, the U.S. economy has created 2.4 million jobs, but over the same period of time the U.S. government has added 3.3 million people to the Social Security disabilities list. Since 2008, the national debt has nearly doubled, and we are spending $1.4 trillion more per year than we are taking in.

Total future unfunded liabilities for Medicare and Social Security are currently $70 trillion. This debt amounts to $500,000 per household.

The U.S. has spent trillions of dollars defending the existing world order at the expense of our future generations for people who hate us. The U.S. has recently joined Japan, Greece, Italy, Ireland and Portugal as members of an exclusive club of nations whose public debt exceeds 100 percent of its Gross Domestic Product. In 1978, China was among the poorest nations in the world, and is now forecast to become the richest. Today, communist China boosts it has 800,000 millionaires and 65 billionaires. How did all this occur?

In the U.S. Congress, 12 percent of our elected leaders are in the top 1 percent of the nation’s richest Americans. In New York City it takes six weeks to obtain a “food protection permit” for a lemonade stand. In Louisiana, a worker is required to be licensed by the state to arrange flowers for pay.

The U.S. Supreme Court is currently deciding if a woman who threw a toxic substance on her cheating husband and his car has criminally violated an international treaty signed by the U.S. Christian churches are required to be licensed as day cares for “Mother’s Day Out” events and churches are required to obtain government approval to erect a sign that displays the time of their services. Where is all this going?

In the late 18th century, the Scottish economist Adam Smith wrote his classic book, “The Wealth of Nations,” and he spent some time in it describing what he called the “steady state economy,” which he said was a nation where the majority of the citizens were experiencing stagnant or declining real income. He pointed out that the hallmark of this steady economic state was the presence of corrupt and monopolistic elites that exploited the system of law and government administration to further their own economic advantage and special interest.

Smith said that under the steady state, more and more people become dependent on the state to provide for their basic needs; similar to the Greeks, the Italians, the Portuguese, and the French, who have spent decades increasing their consumption without increasing their means of production. They in turn voted for politicians, who promised them more, but never deliver the means to produce more. Does this sound like something we’re experiencing in America today?

In Niall Ferguson’s recent book: “The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die,” he writes that the counterweight to government domination was kept in balance by the strength and democratic depth that existed in the local political and social organizations that extended across America. Ferguson maintains that local organizations were the foundation of America’s republic, but have been declining over the last 50 years.

Local organizations like the Elks, Moose, Rotary, Lions, Kiwanis, American Legion, VFW, PTA and dozens of other local associations are dying because the memberships are not being replenished with younger members. He notes that, “People no longer associate for causes.

Now they use Facebook to create social networks that are huge in number but weak in substance and character. Facebook has become a vast tool enabling like-minded people (friends) to exchange like-minded opinions about what they ‘like’.”

In his book, “Bowling Alone,” Robert Putman details a recent significant decline in America’s “social capital” and citizen involvement in public and social events and organizations: Attendance at public meetings is down 35 percent over the last 10 years; Membership in PTA/PTO’s has declined 61 percent; 32 national-based chapters of associations like Rotary, Lions, American Legion etc. are down 50 percent; Volunteerism for charity is down 42 percent and church attendance is down 40 percent. Ask yourself: Where is all this going?

The 19th French author, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in his book “Democracy in America” that Americans, unlike Frenchmen, preferred liberty over equality and therein lies America’s hidden strength that has made all the difference and exception. In my own view, this difference is changing.

Of others who put equality above all else, de Tocqueville predicted: “I see an innumerable crowd of like and equal men who revolve on themselves without repose, procuring the small and vulgar pleasures with which they fill their souls. Each of them withdrawn and apart, is like a stranger to the destiny of all others; his children and his particular friends form the whole species for him; as for dwelling with his fellow citizens, he is beside them, but he doesn’t see them; he touches them and does not feel them; he exists only in himself and for himself alone…”

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